I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of producing cooked rice by heating a rice-cooking pot containing rice and water for boiling the rice.
II. Description of the Related Art
Rice-cooking processes are carried out by feeding rice washed and immersed in water, and water for boiling the rice in an amount suitable for the amount of the rice to a rice-cooking pot; and heating the rice-cooking pot. The rice-cooking pot is usually heated continuously from the beginning to the end of the cooking without interruption. With electric rice cookers and gas rice cookers, when the temperature at the inner side of the bottom of the rice-cooking pot (inner pot) reaches the preliminarily set temperature, it is judged as the cooking was completed and so the heating is finished.
On the other hand, it has been proposed to heat the cooked rice again for a time period after waiting for a prescribed time from the finish of the heating after the judgment that the cooking has been completed, in order to appropriately brown the cooked rice (see, for example, Patent Literature 1). It has also been proposed to heat the cooked rice for a prescribed time period when the cooked rice is incubated at 70° C. in order to inhibit the growth of microorganisms (see, for example, Patent Literature 2).    Patent Literature 1: JP 55-151918 A    Patent Literature 1: JP 2001-37635 A
Although the inventions described in these patent literatures are for improving the taste of the cooked rice or for extending the shelf life of the cooked rice, the invention described in Patent Literature 1 is to appropriately brown the cooked rice, and the invention described in Patent Literature 2 is to inhibit growth of microorganisms during incubation, and in both of these inventions, the cooking process per se is carried out by a conventional process and how to carry out the cooking process per se is not studied at all. Further, although it is known to additionally heat the cooked rice after finish of the cooking rice, the additional heating is performed on the cooked rice of which cooking has been completed, and the heating during the rice-cooking process is continued from the beginning to the end without interruption.